Also, I am very interested in how WG exactly ‘detects’ who uses illegal mods. Unless these were players who were stupid enough to post screenshots or videos of them actually using them, there is no way WG would be able to know this without seriously violating ones privacy.

Mods work completely client-side, so there is no way to detect mods without scanning your local computer. We already through this with (I think it was an early version of Denuvo) DRM software that wanted to do this and this was ruled to be illegal.

There IS anti-cheat software which scans your local computer (like BattleEye), but you have to give that software very specific authorisation to do so upon installation and even then, it does not send that information anywhere…

I believe it was in the user agreement that you handed wargaming the rights to quietly review your game logs but I do not believe there is an article in there that speciffically allows wargaming to access anything outside of the complete wot folder if you read it. It is also hard to delete data that is cycled to external servers and that is my best guess on how they catch cheaters besides just a general cross reference between input and output.

Just for some peace of mind, it wouldn’t be of any benefit for wargaming to ban an innocent player because you’re essentially deleting content and making cheat hunting methods public to mod developers would encourage new methods on how to cheat the system. I can see that giving wargaming a free pass is negative in the long run so it’s more of down to the developers and community managers to leak info if wargaming is going too far. But we all know wargaming is a cruel, hive mind, singularity, hell bent on torturing and harvesting the suffering of players to feed their dark chaos gods. So I think we’re doomed.

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I don’t know any mods who would need to be injected, but as for the game folder they still need permission. It is YOUR local disk in YOUR computer, regardless of its contents. Several anti-cheat software programs also received heat for doing this, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they slipped it in their ToS somewhere…

Blah, blah, blah. They are checking integrity of the game files with every start, wheter there is something to repair, or not. What exactly stops them from scanning the game directory with an added parameter that includes list of blacklisted files? Nothing. Same goes with e.g. hardware survery – I am sure they have anonymous statistics with information what dosrt of hardware players use etc.

If they really did, a whole lot of players would be banned now. This is just a simple gesture and show of force with little to no meaning. There are some players I know for a fact use illegal mods (and not even grey area ones) and they are still in the game. We’ll see how ‘real’ this so-called threat from WG is. It takes more than just this for me to believe all those conspiracy theories.

Oh, and by the way, the game doesn’t check file integrity. It simply checks game client version and that’s it. You can easily remove or edit core game files and the game will still either start or crash later on. You can test that yourself.

Thing is how they detect you cheating or using illegal mods is the game is set at a thresh hold of 50 percent whatever they set it at they go by stats to see if they go up a lot or down a little they scam players into believing there is succession when the only scam is to make money . They ban accounts like in my case all my info managed to make it to a site lot of other peoples were as well a breach in there so called security they feel no liability to it when it is on their servers long story short they threw chargebacks at me cause I stopped unauthorized transactions when my account was hacked I never gave my stuff out to be on a website where other users names and passwords were also breached the problem I have is the charge off aspect they penalize the innoncent reward the ones that do wrong in order for me to play the game I would have to pay the original amount plus 19.95 in a fee to wargamin I said screw that said some other things bout the frauding around and scamming of nerfing the tanks they say all the way to needing new maps to making match maker fair to the player since that is what the agreement everyone clicks on is for fair play two tiers higher is a big issue doesn’t show you skill but greed . So they banned my first account or blocked it due to reason of lawsuit which I filed none just told them though that I did report it to the FBI and that people are looking into it on the North America side mean this company use to have a Headquarters in Chicago then a phone number they no longer have any of that because they can’t face the people they screw they consider the players that being us customers if that is the case I would love the crap I did buy from 3 years ago put on another account when I mentioned that they got pissy sent me a response won’t let me respond back that is how chicken shit they are .

I can tell you as a security person in IT, all the folks saying you can’t be detected because nothing is installed client side is hogwash. You can still intercept incoming data to the server, analyze it for inconsistencies from client data, and begin to build logic and filters that will start to raise your probability of “cheat” detection over time to a very high level. Do this on firewalls all the time, I don’t need a thing from the source, I just need to modify how I look for inconsistencies.

Well… WG apparently has a system to detects illegal mods (otherwise there would be bans for it). It could be either some sort of code running on “server side” and I gues it is also sending additional info to the server from the game client itself.

There are numerous ways they can detect almost anything that you have doing with game files. They didnt even had to do some major update. They just changed something on the “server side” – to collect the info and also applayed some ninja 10 mb patch and suddenly they have all the info.

And I think the way they detect illegal mods shuld remain a secret – so cheaters will not be able to provide some countermeasures for that.

No screenshots or video published. This is most likely done by one of 2 things
1 – they bought out an illegal mod maker and now know a way to detect it.
2 – Their file integrety checker creates a report and sends WG a list of everything installed

I’m sure it’s another,”show of force.” They did a simular thing a few months back in WoW. For all the talk about it, it would almost never happen on the SEA server, if they did all the top Vietnamese clans would be disbanded, and there would be no clan wars. If you want to get rid of illegal mods, get rid of the resmod folder.

I’m not sure just removing the resmods folder would help. People would just go back to installing mods the old-fashioned way before that folder existed. If you want to completely disable mods, you will probably have to use some sort of resource encryption…

Its a program they use I know how it works. It scans the folders for anything thats not in the basic folder of the clement if it detects something it checks for the allowed section and the banned section if it detects a banned file or folder or even the smallest fragment of Trojan or banned mod it automaticly bans you from the game.

Yeah, I can tell you they are NOT using that. That is pretty much akin to spyware and would red flag anyone using any serious scanner. Several anti-cheat software programs (Punkbuster for example) have already tried that in the past received a LOT of heat for that.

There are some serious nerds playing this game who have their computers protected with some serious sh*t and know how to do that much better than you and I together.

I know a lot of people will be asking why don’t they just disable mods althogether. The answer is that it would only harm players with legal mods in the short run and harm WoT development in the long run. If you see any other online videogame scene you will see that cheats are a problem there too even without mod support.

Videogame cheats are an arms race between game and cheat developers. As a detection software gets implemented, cheat devs are already reverse enginnering it to bypass it.

They could simply disable the ability to mod game files, that affect battle or battle loading screen in any way (so you could only be able to use garage mods). Sure, you could not use some HD skins or sound mods – but lets remember here – legal mods are maybe, perhaps 1% of all mods available for WoT.

First, your solution is crap. As I said other games also have this problem without mod support and checking files and whatnot. It’s only needed for some clever coders to bypass the detection, mask their files as game ones or even just say “fuck the files” and use some other technique for the cheat implementation.

Second, I don’t agree. There are a lot of legal mods available and some important ones are quite widespread (i.e XVM, even with some important features already in-game, is still used for the extra customization and stats). It only suffice to see a menu of those mods installers to see that there are a lot of them.

…The best solution is to completely remove the ability to mod the game and add some fille checksum – checking mechanism – so you could not be able to run game with modified files (anti – cheat).

It would not eliminate 100% of cheats, but at least with 80 – 90% of them. And as you said – those who realy want will find a way to cheat anyway. But it will by much more dificult to do, than it is now. And that is something…

btw. Although XVM is considered legal (at least for now) it sitll gives you a lot of additional info about other team and your team. During battle in default “clean” game acces to this inforamtion that quick is imposible.

played for 5 years since beta, and i get the feeling that concerning illegal mods ”it’s fine, as long as you dont get caught” attitude from WG.

after 40K battles semi-vanilla only QB modpack, i tried an aimbot trial from shaitan for 1 week. it was awesome, easy to install and easy to use.
There lies the problem……. i thought it was hard to install such mods, and that u got caught ASAP. nobody called me hacker or aimbot etc. in that week. got alot of my suspicions confirmed that sometimes when u come up against some1 MAYBE using aimbot etc. u knew and learnt that they were in fact using aimbot.
realized that this problem was much bigger than i first thought, clan wars, strongholds etc.

after this i felt depressed, and felt cheated for NOT using aimbots for 5 years. could have used aimbot this entire time….
it was so easy to install this shit….

this is FAR too late WG…. coming now 5 years after launch with the bans and stuff….

Hey ! look at this from the bright side ! For 5 years YOU were playing game. Not some “bot”. It was all you. When you missed the terget it was you. When you hit the target it was you. And tell me, hitting target all by yourself… would you be as satisfied with this as you would if you used some aim-bot to aim for you ?

when they said they were gonna ban ppl for illegal mods, i had to try it atleast once.
enjoyed aimbot alot, not the aimbot itself, but the marker/reticle gave a % chance of pen at where u were aiming, much easier to decide where to shoot, when a tank is angling 30-45 degrees etc.

dont want to sound like a total asshat, but i enjoyed the aimbot trial. was new and fresh.

but i am AGAINST illegal mods, always has been. just not fair that i had to play the correct way for 5 years.
feels like we who have played by the book and rules have been punished, for NOT using aimbot etc….
always believing WG brainwash about them having illegal mods under control…….

I’m really curious to see how they come to the conclusion of someone cheating. As far as I can imagine, they’re doing it based on accusations. Anyone can be accused of it. I’ve been accused of being a bot many times b/c I don’t follow the orders or respond to the tomato in charge and end up staying alive longer. As far as the “what took them so long” argument people (I’m assuming they r) make, it hurts a lot more to lose something u spent years doing then it is to just start fresh after a couple hundred matches. It stings more.

I am fairly curious to know how many of those accounts are secondaries, bot run, or simply forgotten accounts. probably only 5-10 percent of those accounts but it isn’t too hard for the high end cheaters to take gold from their clan treassuries to start a new account. This is just the pessimistic side of me.

It is good of wargaming to be acting on bans in single swings so countermeasures can be stifled. It is also good they did not do this when december started as that would set a poor tone for the month. Perhaps the top tanker event was used as a ruse to weed out the most aggressive cheaters/riggers. But that’s about all my optimism has patience for such a distasteful event.

People interested so much in “how dey do dis” could just use google and look for shady mod pages to find the info in 5 minutes, it wasn’t that hard:

1. Aimbot users getting detected (feedback data I guess, if client can fetch server sights it can send it back too, changing weakspots etc.).
2. WG’s “Ace Tanker” mod for event is a local spyware. But that was something to be expected, WG wouldn’t wipe their butts after a toilet visit if it wasn’t for the smell afterwards, so creating a mod from scratch for time-limited event was suspicious.
3. P0LIR0ID whistleblowed (sold) his database to WG. That explains why amount of bans on RU is so disproportionate to other servers.

So, whats to stop these ‘cheaters’ using another server. They get banned on one server, nothing to stop them from CT or a different country server though? So they’ll just change server and carry on until they get caught again.

You give them permissions to scan your game files when you download the game…so no privacy issues exist. If you can download mods…they can too, so they know the files and can scan for them. Battle Eye in steam is the same. You may go undetected for a while if you write your own mods…but, you do not need to cheat, vanilla is fine

You douche bags all whining now. 50% + of players are using mods including iffy mods. The top clans on NA are using transparent modules on your tank mods along with others breaking objects on map (shown on mini map) and lower top 10 are using aim bots. They will have to ban almost every player in the game now that everyone got so used to it.

What Wargaming and many others have not yet understood is that illegal mods they are a democratic way that helps the game to be balanced between weak and strong players. A weak person likes to dream about being a superman and doing things he can not. This is the real reason why so many people use a cheat mode.

I can tell you my story about being banned. I used a mod that showed me the reloading time of my enemies. I had no idea that mod has become illegal because i\ve been using it for 8 months. One day I met in random my biggest enemy – he hates me big time. He died among first. After that he moved on me and recorded my moves. He sent this video to WG. 4 days later I got banned 7 days for using illegal mod.

How about grow the fuck up and stop cheating as if somehow you are entitled to do so. Try actually READING the forums once in awhile to find wtf is going on. If you install ANY program that allows you to do ANYTHING not programmed into the game YOU ARE CHEATING!!

Are you having anger management issues ? Go see a shrink, this is not the right place for you ! I repeat for you, dumbass : reload time was LEGAL, after november 2016 they made it ILLEGAL ! I am not wasting my time on forums, fb, twitter and some other shit, like YOU DO ! I PLAY !

Again, reading comprehension seems beyond your limited mental capacity. As i have said repeatedly anything that circumvents the program and gives you information that you are not entitled to, you are cheating.

I got banned for a power outage. Net goes down when you don’t have electricity so your tank sits there and people complain about you botting it. What a joke! i think they will lose money over this. I can’t see anybody being happy or wanting to rush out and buy a new tank now.

I can’t see this ban actually helping anything except pissing people off and making them not want to buy anything in the game. Who would rush out and buy a new tank if they just had a 7 day ban? I think all 15,937 people and their clans should boycott the game.

I hope people quit or boycott the game. Don’t let the rulers dictate to the players. Boycott them. It’s an outrage. Ban people and not have valid proof or evidence. We should all stick together and stop this banning process.

Please see my previous comments. All of you online gamers have felt the need to install cheating “mods” for so damn long you are like little children throwing a tantrum when your parents say “no more.”

This folder is used for packaged World of Tanks modifiers (*.wotmods)., Wot developers make this folder with clean installaTION, WHY? In my folder there is only this doc. In it is written the above…, I know that if you want to install mods , illegal or not, you have to put it in this folder, so the game will load it, scanning this folder with for example the client or in a update could be enough to reveal unwanted mods.., but is it happening?